:
Anne of Denmark is crowned queen consort of Scotland.
January–March •
January 6 –
García Hurtado de Mendoza becomes the new
Viceroy of Peru (nominally including most of South America except for Brazil). He will serve until 1596. •
January 10 – Construction of the
Fortezza Nuova around the city of
Livorno begins in Italy in the
Grand Duchy of Tuscany on the orders of
Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and continues for more than 14 years. •
January 25 –
Luis de Velasco y Castilla, Marquess of Salinas, becomes the new
Viceroy of New Spain, a colony comprising most of Central America, Mexico and what is now a large part of the southwestern United States. Velasco will govern until 1595, and then again from 1607 to 1611. •
February 3 –
Peter Ernst I von Mansfeld-Vorderort, the German-born commander of the Spanish Imperial Army captures the German fortress of
Rheinberg after a
four-year long siege during the
Eighty Years' War. •
March 4 –
Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange,
takes Breda, by concealing 68 of his best men in a peat-boat, to get through the impregnable defenses. •
March 14 –
Battle of Ivry:
Henry IV of France again defeats the forces of the
Catholic League, under
Charles, Duke of Mayenne. •
March 21 – The
Treaty of Constantinople is signed between the
Ottoman Empire (in modern-day Turkey) and the
Safavid Empire (modern-day Iran), ending a
12-year war between the two nations.
April–June •
April 4 – The Cortes of
Castile approves a new subsidy, the
millones. •
April 24 – Ten armed English merchant vessels of the
Levant Company are intercepted by 12 galleys of the Spanish Navy while attempting to pass through the
Straits of Gibraltar after trading in the
Mediterranean Sea. Levant Company's
Benedict Barnham, on the flagship
Salomon, leads the corporate fleet in a six-hour battle and
heavily damages the Spanish ships, clearing the way for the company ships to return home. •
May 7 –
King Henry of Navarre, claimant to the throne of France, begins an unsuccessful
attempt to besiege Paris, at the time controlled by the
Catholic League. By August 30, Henry is forced to raise the siege, when
Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma comes to its rescue with a Spanish army. •
May 17 –
Anne of Denmark is crowned queen consort of
Scotland, at
Holyrood Abbey in
Edinburgh. •
June 23 – The Japanese samurai
Toyotomi Hideyoshi sends an army of 15,000 men, led by generals
Maeda Toshiie and
Uesugi Kagekatsu, in an attack on the
Hachiōji Castle in what is now
Tokyo. The castle is lightly defended, by only 1,300 men, because the samurai
Hōjō Ujiteru has most of his troops engaged in defending Hideyohsi's
siege of Odawara. The castle is captured after one day, and later destroyed on orders of the shogun
Tokugawa Ieyasu.
July–September •
July 1 (13th waning of
1st Ashadha, 952 CS) –
Naresuan Maharat becomes the new ruler of Thailand as Sanphet II of the
Ayutthaya Kingdom, upon the death of his father,
Sanphet I. •
July 19 – The day after his 12th birthday,
Ferdinand of Habsburg becomes the new
Archduke of Inner Austria (Innerösterreich) upon the death, in
Graz, of his father
Charles II. A regency council rules in the place of Ferdinand until 1596. •
July 21 – Japan's first diplomatic representatives to Europe,
Itō Mancio, Michele Chijiwa, Giuliano Nakaura and Martino Hara, return to Japan after eight years, having departed on February 20, 1582. •
August 4 – In Japan, the
siege of Odawara, part of
Toyotomi Hideyoshi's campaign to eliminate the
clan of samurais led by
Hōjō Ujinao, ends with the surrender of Odawara, part of Toyotomi's unification of the country. •
August 18 –
John White, governor of the
Colony of Roanoke, returns to Roanoke after having left the North American colony in
1587 to get supplies. Upon arrival at, the crew of the ships
Hopewell and
Moonlight find that the Roanoke Colony is deserted, with the only clues to where the colonist went being the word "CRO" carved into a tree, and the word
CROATOAN (believed to be a reference to Hatteras Island, where the colonists formerly lived). •
August 27 –
Pope Sixtus V dies after serving for five years, and a new
papal conclave is organized, to start on September 7 at the
Apostolic Palace in Rome. •
September 5 –
Alexander Farnese's army forces
Henry IV of France to lift the siege of Paris. •
September 15 • After the eight day conclave,
Giovanni Battista Castagna, the Cardinal-Priest of
San Marcello al Corso receives the necessary two-thirds majority despite support for Cardinal
Marco Antonio Colonna. Castagna becomes
Pope Urban VII but contracts
malaria and dies 12 days later. • The estimated 6.0 magnitude
Neulengbach earthquake causes significant damage and some loss of life, in
Lower Austria and
Vienna; the effects are felt as far as
Bohemia and
Silesia.
October–December •
October 6 – Two days before the scheduled papal conclave begins,
Enrique de Guzmán, 2nd Count of Olivares, Spain's ambassador to the
Papal States, presents the cardinals with the recommendations of King
Philip II of Spain, a set of candidates whom the Spanish cardinals will support, and 30 whom they are instructed not to vote for. •
October 8 – The second
papal conclave in less than four weeks opens at the Apostolic Palace in Rome, 23 days after the
previous conclave had been concluded, and 53 cardinals arrive. • German astronomer
Michael Maestlin becomes the first person to record an observation of the occultation of the planet
Mars by the planet
Venus. •
October 16 –
Saadian invasion of the Songhai Empire: An army of 20,000 troops, led by
Judar Pasha is dispatched from
Marrakesh in the
Saadi Sultanate (now
Morocco), on orders of Sultan
Ahmad al-Mansur. The Saadi Army's objective is to conquer the
Songhai Empire, led by the Emperor
Askia Ishaq II, in North Africa, corresponding to what is now the
Republic of Mali. •
October 24 – After an unsuccessful search of the "lost colony" of Roanoke, English officer John White and the surviving crew of the ships
Hopewell and
Moonlight return to England on
October 24. •
December 5 – Niccolò Sfondrato, Cardinal-priest of
Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, is elected as the new pope and takes the name
Pope Gregory XIV. Sfondrato is selected as a compromise candidate after
Gabriele Paleotti falls 3 votes short of being elected.
Date unknown •
Orthodox Patriarch
Meletius I of Alexandria succeeds
Silvester. • The Spanish are pushed out of southern
Gelderland by the Dutch forces. == Births ==